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Good morning and Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

My morning is already off to a rocky start, as I had spilled boiling water all over my peanut butter toast for breakfast and burned my mouth on my boiling tea.. But I also woke up to a beautiful sunrise and some pretty feathered frost climbing up our windows, which almost makes up for it! It is a chilly six degrees outside this morning (real feel of -7), and soft snowflakes are falling gently from the sky.

This morning I’ve been going down memory lane on my blog. Because exactly a year ago today, we bought our house! This time last year, on Valentine’s Day, we spent the day surrounded by family and showing off our new house!

It feels like we’ve had our house longer than a year.. Because the amount of work we have put into this house has been incredible! Within the first TWO WEEKS of owning this house, my hubby, his friends, and our families helped to scrub the walls, clean every surface in this house, paint all the walls and ceilings, and we all ended up getting sick from all of the nicotine everywhere! (The guy who lived there before was a smoker). If you want to see the before and after pictures, CLICK HERE!

After those two weeks, it was time for us to move into our new house and out of the apartment, which was miserable because everyone was sick!

After finally moving in, we went to work fixing and replacing stuff in the house! The fridge and oven were both replaced, and the pipe from the washer to the septic tank was filled with roots and needed to be replaced. My amazing hubby did all of these things while I went to work every day, and I was blessed to come home to most things done for the day. ❤

After the ground thawed, we went to work on the yard! Limbs were cut off dying trees, the yard was cleaned up, garden beds were added, a compost bin was constructed, and all of our bushes went into the ground!

When summer hit, we got our chickens and we started to feel like a real homestead! We enjoyed watching our chickens grow up, and the day we got our first egg was one of the best days for us! It meant no more buying eggs from the store. It meant bartering eggs with our neighbors for stuff in their gardens. It meant that we were on the right track.

We have enjoyed all of the seasons here on the homestead, and I loved the fact that I finally got a house to decorate throughout the seasons!
Spring was spent watching countless flowers bloom around the house and adding our own plants to the property.
Summer was spent in our new pool, having tea by the fire, watching the chickens run around their pen, and dodging the countless tornadoes that popped up out of nowhere!
Fall was spent putting up Halloween decorations outside and watching as the beautiful leaves all around us change colors!
Winter was spent huddled inside with family, either celebrating the winter holidays, or being sick from the flu that seems to be taking everyone by storm this year..

We have done a lot to our new home, and our new home has done a lot for us. We have survived three tornadoes in our new house. We have survived two artic blasts and temperatures in the negatives (and our pipes never froze). We have survived countless flues, ear infections, colds, and a few mild cases of nicotine poisoning from our walls! And we have even survived a wild dog in our chicken coup! It feels like we have an understanding with our house to protect each other and shelter each other from the storms.

In conclusion, we have had one amazing year in this house! The amount of work we’ve put into this property has truly been an act of love, and we feel blessed to call this amazing place our home! ❤

As always, remember to smile, have an amazing day, and always enjoy the fruits of your labors!